WordPress 4.9 Error – Unable to Edit Files – Resolved

Recently, on November 16, 2017, WordPress released its latest version. WordPress 4.9 “Tipton”. Named after a Jazz musician, Billy Tipton. That news may sound like a (Jazz) music to the WordPress users’ ears but not for long. The new WordPress, encountered an error. This is not something new. In fact, just like any other release, there are many errors which eventually get resolved. Hosomwever, input from the WordPress community is necessary in order to get a hold of whatever’s wrong and this article is one such attempt.

So the story is that my web hosting provider, auto updated my blog to the latest version of WordPress 4.9. That’s convenient but for the first time ever since I started using WordPress, I encountered an error immediately after the update. The error was that I was unable to edit any of my file in the WordPress Editor.

Finally, of course, with the help of the volunteers on the WordPress’s forum I was able to resolve the WordPress 4.9 Error so I thought why not share my resolution with many of the other WordPress users out there who might be facing the same problem.

After all, it’s all about giving back to the community. Right?

However, before going further, here’s a small but necessary disclaimer.

Disclaimer

First, I truly admire WordPress as a CMS platform and this article is in no way to degrade the platform in any sense. The errors are normal part of the development process and they are acceptable as long as they don’t damage your blog/website significantly.

Second, the solution below of course, does not apply to all the WordPress users. There may be many reasons for the same issue and it’s literally impractical to test all of the solutions. So I’d rather stick to the problem that I faced, resolved, reproduced and then resolved again in order to make sure that the problem identified was in fact a problem.

So once we’ve gotten the disclaimer covered, let’s start with the details of the error and how I resolved it.

WordPress 4.9 Error – Unable to Edit Files in WordPress Editor

As the heading suggests, soon after the update, I was unable to edit my header.php file. I wanted to apply some changes in the file and wasn’t able to do so.

As soon as I’d hit the “Update” button after making the changes, it’d keep on processing and would end up giving the following error:

“Unable to communicate back with site to check with fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP”.

To be honest, this wasn’t the only that was showing up. After couple of tries more, it gave me “Scrape Nonce Check Failed” error as well. However, after a day, when I tried to reproduce this error, I couldn’t. So I’ll just keep it to this, “Unable to communicate…” error only.

Response On My Thread.

After few hours, I received a response from the moderator, Steve Stern who asked me to install Health Check plugin and report back its findings.

Just for summary, health check plugin generates a report of your WordPress, PHP and database information so in many cases, it’s quite a handy detection tool.

Following the tip, I installed the plugin and when tried to use it, again, it kept on loading and eventually the browser ended up with Error 504 – Gateway Timeout.

Another WordPress Volunteer To The Rescue

Needless to say, I updated this on the WordPress thread and then another good fella (or girl) advised me to primarily deactivate my Contact plugin and then report any update. She also suggested me that I might be having WP_CRON error as well while some other plugin could also be causing the problem.

For a moment, I thought to be trapped in the abyss of errors after errors but I had no choice. So I went to my plugins list to deactivate my contact plugin.

No Contact Plugin

As soon as I landed on my plugins list page, I remembered that couple of days back, I deactivated and deleted my previous contact form plugin. While I installed another one but I never activated it.

So the error due to contact form plugin was out of equation.

The only option left for me to apply the trial and error methodology and deactivate plugins one by one while at the same time keep checking if the error is resolving.

Sometimes, Laziness Pays Off

I started looking for the plugin to be the first member of my hit list and to be honest, I did not want to deactivate majority of them as all of the plugins were playing key role in the functioning of my blog. Additionally, I also feared that I had to reconfigure some of the plugins in case I reactivate them.

Truly speaking, I was just being lazy.

I started looking for the plugin which would have the least impact if I deactivate it and there you go, I found one.

This plugin was Shortpixel Image Optimizer.

My Lucky Day

It must be my lucky day as deactivating the very first plugin did the trick for me. As an afterthought, I should have bought a lottery ticket but alas, I exhausted my good luck on this WordPress 4.9 error.

Reproducing The Same Issue

To be sure that the the solution is indeed not a fluke, I decided to take a rather more scientific approach and thought that before announcing my “major discovery” to the world, I should be confident that error was indeed because of that plugin.

In that case, if I reactivate the plugin, I should be 100% sure that it will reproduce the same issue. In case not, then even though I might have resolved the issue for myself but that’s it. I could not suggest it to anyone else.

So this is what I did. Went to my plugins list. Reactivated the Shortpixel Image Optimization plugin, edited my header.php file and clicked the “update file” button.

The error appeared one more time.

Indeed the plugin is having issue with the WordPress 4.9 version. So I went in the “Add New” section of the plugin area in order to see if the plugin is compatible with the latest WordPress version.

To my surprise, it says it is.

Seems like that the developers haven’t been informed yet. So I took it on myself and have emailed them about the issue.

I’m sure they will eventually figure it out.

What’s The Crux Of The Matter

The crux of the matter is that while there may be more than one causes of the above WordPress 4.9 error, it’s good to first see if the solution that I’ve jotted above applies to you as well.

If yes, then I’d be glad of being of some help. In case not, then I’d suggest you to start your own thread on WordPress forum and see if that helps. Additionally, if you resolved the error it’d be great to share your solution either below in the comments section or in some other forum so that anybody else can gain benefit from it.

Good bye for now.

Update

I recently checked if the WordPress issue is still there by updating the plugin Shortpixel Image Optimizer to version 4.8.7.

After updating, I can edit and save my files in the WordPress File Editor section. So the WordPress 4.9 Error due to Shortpixel Image Optimizer plugin is resolved and you may no longer need to deactivate the plugin.

Yes, there’s a function in the plugin which is/was causing the error. If you follow the link above to the WordPress forum in which I created my thread, you will see that the one of the experts have identified that particular function.

It’s not necessary that there’s only one plugin causing this issue. What I wanted to tell from my post was the methodology that you need to follow in order to resolve your issue.

First things first, start a new thread on WordPress Second, perform health check just like I did Third, start deactivating plugins one by one and see recheck issue after each deactivation and see which plugin is actually the “problem child”.

Did you perform the health check? What error did it give? BTW, if you follow the conversation in the forum above you’ll see the function referred by one of the WordPress representative. I hope that’d help.

I deactivated all the plugins even cleared the browser history and website history still the error stays the same.could you please help me with the some another solution or the name of that particular function that is creating the mess..have been dealing this issue from long but cant figure it out..

I had this problem on my WordPress site. It happened because my URL was at https and the cert was invalid due it being on a shared hosting platform. When I changed the logged in URL to http I no longer got the error and could once again make changes to my theme php files in the online editor.

Hello, I have the same problem: “Unable to communicate back with site to check for fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP.”

The artilce didn’t work for me, I have the same problem: “Unable to communicate back with site to check for fatal errors, so the PHP change was reverted. You will need to upload your PHP file change by some other means, such as by using SFTP.”

So sorry to hear that you’re still not able to resolve your issue. In your case, I’d suggest you approach the WordPress team and open a new thread on their forum. This way, other people may also benefit from your resolution.

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